A variety of unmanned surface vehicles (e.g., on the ground or water surface) are used to sense/collect data about an environment in which they reside. The data is then transmitted to a base station using radio frequency (RF) communications. However, the range of the RF communication is limited by the vehicle's line-of-sight due to its ground or water surface location. To improve the communication range, the vehicle could be equipped with satellite communications (or SATCOM as it is known) equipment. However, SATCOM equipment is big and heavy, consumes a lot of power, is expensive, is limited in bandwidth, and is subject to satellite availability and/or allocation problems.